Teesside parents urged to help their children prevent deliberate fires
Cleveland Fire and Rescue Service is issuing advice as kids are off school
Parents in Teesside are being urged to know what their children are up to in order to prevent deliberate fires.
Cleveland Fire and Rescue Service are issuing advice as kids are off school.
Sean Smith, community engagement manager, said: "We do prepare for an increase in deliberate fires over the school holidays typically. What I'm pleased to be able to report is that we've seen something like a 34 percent reduction over this last financial year and the amount of deliberate fires we are seeing. We aim to communicate and educate with young people and we're seeing a great success this time, collaborating with other partners this time to see a reduction in those numbers.
"It's not specifically just at parks, it would include some park areas but it can also be wasteland and scrubland. Obviously we do have issues and have had issues in the past with Eston hills, so we keep an eye on that and we then focus our prevention activities accordingly to where we're seeing those instances arise.
"We have specialist teams that can work with young people that might have developed an interest in setting fires that can work discreetly with them, so that we can try and work out how to change those behaviours. If parents are suspecting or worried then let us know, we'd like to work with you so we can influence that. Alternatively, if people are concerned then we'd encouraged them to use firestoppers.
"If your children are coming back and they're smelling of smoke, if they look like they might have singes, it's quite an obvious smell then maybe have a discussion with them, but enforcement isn't usually the first intervention. It might be education as we'd like to work with people to affect those behaviours so please let us know and we'll work with those parents.
"We treat all fires seriously becuase it can spread and has the potential to cause injury. It can range from one appliance if it's a small fire or a refuse fire, but it can range all the way up to multiple resources. It could be a large, derelict building or something of that nature, so it can have a significant impact in terms of our response to people who are in genuine danger.
"If we're spending a lot of time dealing with what we'd call a nuisance fire or a small fire, it's time that we're not spending trying to keep people safe in their homes and preventing other incidents occurring as well. It's not just the case of taking fire appliances away from emergency cover, which it does, but it's also taking away those fire appliances from engaging in other priority activities like preventing house fires."
You can contact Firestoppers on their website.